A Fool's Utopia 07.17.08: TV Weddings

Posted by Ron Martin on 07.17.2008

This week in one man's utopia we celebrate the wedding season that is summer by exploring a few of our favorite TV weddings. We take a look at Season Four of the Office and the new Disney classis, Beauty and the Beast and Jimmy Ray asks "Who Wants to Know?" Horrible things are just a link away.

It's summer time people and with it comes our Summer Celebration! You have love alliteration that begins with two totally different letters. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, but Ron – we've already covered much of the summer. And you'd be write, but there is still a missing piece. As I sat at my fourth one of the summer this past weekend, I realized we hadn't talked about the one thing everyone can't count on each and every summer….weddings. More important to us are TV weddings. When a show has reached that level where it really has to reach for material or it need something shocking as a shot in the arm, there are certain TV clichés the writers fall back on. Enter the wedding. Let's take a look at a few TV weddings we've been invited to in the past.


The Brady Girls Get Married

Ever wondered what happened to that wacky, do-good family down the street, the Bradys? This made for TV movie will tell you. The Brady's moved over to NBC to marry off the two oldest Brady daughters. Just as Mike and Carol got rid of all their kids, Jan announces her marriage to her professor boyfriend. For some reason, Carol gets all bitchy and whines to Jan that she had always hope Marsha would marry first. Why? To move a ridiculous plot along. In response to this, Marsha meets a toy salesman and a week later they are engaged and we got ourselves a double Brady wedding. In perfect Brady fashion, the wedding is crapped upon by God (storm) but the Brady's just move along and things turn out perfect. There's no question that this movie was made for nostalgic purposes with lots of flashbacks to the original series to get ratings. And ratings it got. The movie would be chopped into three half hour segments and act as a third of the episodes for the ill-fated Marsha and Jan sitcom The Brady Brides where the miss matched couples all live in the same house. As a side note, this was the only time all the original cast members from the show would work together again. Except Cousin Oliver, but we don't count him.


Dynasty: The Moldavian Massacre

Overall, I have no problem with weddings. I have just a few minor pet peeves. I don't like overly long, drawn out ceremonies. I'm not fond of doing the Chicken Dance at receptions. Oh, and I hate it when Moldavian revolutionaries bust into the wedding during the ceremony and mow down the entire church of guests with machine guns. That's just what happened in the campy primetime soap Dynasty at the conclusion of the fifth season. Every character of the show was in attendance at the wedding of Amanda Carrington and the Prince of Moldavia when revolutionaries gunned everyone down ending the season with the audience having no idea who had lived or died. It was the most talked about episode of TV during 1985. What made things even more interesting was the fact that just about the entire cast was in contract negotiations, so literally anyone on the show could conceivably be written off as a victim of the massacre. When the dust had cleared and season six began, audiences were disappointed to learn that only two minor characters had been dusted – everything else was the same. Except for the ratings, which started on a downhill slide after the anticlimactic ending of the massacre.


Roseanne: The Wedding

No, this is not the episode where Crystal and Dan's dad get married, though that episode is also entitled "The Wedding." This is the season finale (or close to it) for Season Eight of Roseanne. The show had gone down hill once Roseanne herself took over the creative direction and viewers were jumping ship by the boatload. The episodes became surreal, sometimes ridiculous. Figuring they wouldn't get another season, the show wanted to go out with a bang so they finally married off Darlene and David after years of breaking up and piecing back together their relationship. Oh, and Darlene's pregnant. Let's get five generations of women in a room together and discuss. Instead of going with wacky wedding hi-jinks, Roseanne opts for TV wedding staple #2: Juxtaposition of joy with tragedy. After the wedding, Dan suffers a heart attack that we learn a year later actually killed him. In the last episode of the series, Roseanne reveals most of the wacky hijinks that has happened the past couple of season was actually the version of her life that she liked instead of what happened. Dan actually dies from the heart attack, Darlene does have a baby – only it's Mark's instead of David's. So I guess it's up for grabs whether or not Darlene actually got married to Mark here or Roseanne just made it up. For the record, Sarah Chalke played Becky during this episode.


Friends: The One With All the Weddings

I'm not the world's biggest Friends fanatic. I think the show was largely overrated and just had spots of good runs here and there. However, it would be crazy to not mention it when talking about TV weddings. In the very first show, Rachel runs from her wedding (still in gown). There's a lesbian wedding in there somewhere. Ross gets married at least twice that I can remember – once in England and once in Vegas. At the one in England, Monica hooks up with Chandler for the first time. That turns into a wedding in and of itself with it's own year long buildup. It's at that wedding that we discover Rachel is pregnant with Ross's kid (they were married in Vegas, then divorced). To cap it off, somewhere in the last season Phoebe gets hitched. In the snow. As reward for being the only one who stayed unmarried Joey got the terrible spinoff show Joey, when everyone knows that Phoebe and her tribulations as a new bride should have been the spinoff, but oh well. See why I had to mention it? For a guy who never liked the show all that much, I sure know a lot of the storylines. Hmm.


Cheers: An Old-Fashioned Wedding

Remember above when I said Roseanne opted not to go with wacky hi-jinks in a wedding episode? Cheers did and pretty much redefined the term "wacky hi-jinks." In what is my favorite Cheers episode, Woody gets married to girlfriend Kelly in the tenth season finale. Carla says the stars predict doom and tries to stop the wedding. In turn, Sam has to stop her. Rebecca, still with wedding day jealousy, causes the kitchen staff to quit and has to take over making the cake and has to be stopped by Sam from smashing the mini-groom into the cake. The minister has to go up and die so Cliff and Norm have to hide that fact from the guests…and everyone else. All the while, Frasier and Lilith are trying to keep the wedding guests entertained with karaoke and magic tricks. Add to that the fact that Woody and Kelly have already consummated their relationship and are trying to keep that a secret from Kelly's dad and you have yourself one dandy of an episode. Maybe Carla was right. I love ensemble cast episodes when every character has a function. For my money, this was the best TV wedding.

Other TV weddings:




-- I'm going to admit that part of the reason why I love writing this column is that it is therapeutic. I write about things that bug the ever-living crap out of me, and I feel better. They still bug the crap out of me, but I feel better about it. At this point in time, nothing bothers me more than freaking voicemail. Not the fact that voicemail exists, but the fact that after I get someone's message, I have to listen to some bitch tell me how to leave a voicemail. Ten seconds after hearing the voice message, I am still waiting for the beep. Then, before the beep, this lady has the nerve to come back on and tell me how to leave a message after the beep --- again!. After a ten second voice message, I have to listen to twenty seconds of crap to leave a five second message. What ever happen to you call, the voicemail picks up, you wait for the message to end, the beep and then leave your message. It's only a matter of time before that extra 20 seconds cost someone their life.

-- Animation Update: Beauty and the Beast



I'm not getting through these animated features nearly quick enough, but I'm hoping to pick things up on the back nine. I'm so dedicated that I am watching these things on VHS for you people. VHS! My animated adventure continued with the epic story of Belle and the Beast. This one was interesting because like Snow White I pretty much knew the entire story going in. I have never seen the movie, but I know what Belle looks like, I know what Beast looks like, I know there is talking furniture, they fall in love and everyone lives happily ever after. I've been to Disneyworld, I've played Kingdom Hearts, I know the dealio. Right?

So who the hell is this Gaston, dude? It never occurred to me that their might be a physical antagonist in the film. I had always assume the antagonist was the wall that had to be broken down between Belle and the Beast. I got to tell you, aside from stabbing the Beast and all, Gaston wasn't that bad of a guy. I like some of his ideas. I think he could win a few states if running in a presidential election. How could I go all these years and not know a major character from this movie? Huh.

I think my expectations for this movie were a little high since most people I know list this at the top of their favorite Disney movies list. I don't know what I was expecting, but anything less than a visual buffet of greatness would be less than expected. And it was. Less, that is. While not a bad movie, I just thought the transition from scary Beast to cute, bumbling Beast and from petrified Belle to falling in love Belle was too instantaneous. Having heard the signatures tunes ("Be Our Guest" and "Beauty and the Beast") a hundred times before the film sure hurt the impact of said tunes. And that dog-like footstool just creeped the hell out of me. It didn't have a face! There's also something inherently wrong with Belle falling in love with a supposedly hideous Beast and then ending up with the most handsomest prince ever anyways. I can't decide if that's a good message or not.

I am glad that I watched this one right after Snow White, however. The two are very similar in presentation. Beauty is drawn with darker tones like Snow White, which is in contrast to other Disney films (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin) from the time. And like Snow White, the bad guy dies at the end by falling off a cliff. A good but somewhat overrated flick.

I've got 101 Dalmations and Dumbo waiting in the wings, so let's see where that leads us. I'm going shopping for some of the anime titles. I don't think that my Disney-crazed cousin is going to be able to loan those to me.


-- I am still upset that I haven't seen the mythical mini version of the Burger King "King" mascot. I may have to call into work tomorrow.



-- Thanks to the fine folks at NBC.com, I've finished season four of The Office and am ready for the new season. I was pretty late to the show, but now I've watch every episode. I know I talked about Dwight's place in TV sitcom history a couple of weeks ago, but there is something that has bugged me about Season Four of The Office. I'd put the first three seasons of the show against any three seasons of any show in TV history and it would hold its own. But Season Four? It seems the writer's had some missteps. In an effort to make Pam a stronger female character, instead of, you know, actually making the character stronger, they just got rid of all the female characters stronger than her. They literally just wrote Karen off the show without any explanation (and her midseason appearance as a Regional Manager does not make up for that). Jan does a total 180 and acts incredibly out of character for most of the season. This only weakens the female cast – it does not raise Pam.

Moving Ryan to Regional Manager stinks of shocking swerves for the sake of shocking swerve. I had to double check, but no, Vince Russo did not write the season three finale. Aside from one good episode (the one where Michael and Dwight go to New York), Ryan was entirely ineffective the entire season. Taking Ryan away also ruined Kelly's character who mostly played off him thus subtracting two funny characters without adding any. Hopefully, the season four finale took steps toward remedying this.

Speaking of characters, some of the background characters who had made such strides in Season Three such as Kevin and Angela barely treaded water this season and was largely forgotten. Only Darryl from the rest of the cast really grew this season. I might give you Andy if you argued for him – but that's it.

Then there is Jim and Pam. The entire first three seasons mostly revolve around the sexual tension between these two characters. When they finally get together, it's rather…underwhelming. Not only are the sweet to the point of being sickening, but they become downright cocky and arrogant in most episodes. Add that to the fact that their relationship was forged behind the back of Karen, who had done nothing to warrant such treatment and the couple is only likable to the most loyal Jim and Pam enthusiasts. I found myself rooting against them for the majority of the season.

Make no mistake about it, only Dwight shined through this mostly mediocre season. The other characters had moments, but Dwight was the rock that you could count on each and every week. Even Michael had moments where he was so unbelievably stupid (driving into a lake, anyone?) that you couldn't help but turn on the guy – no matter how talented Steve Carrell is.

I'm hoping that this season was a combination of the writer's strike and just plain misses with some directions they chose to take characters. Hopefully, the writer's will see this and correct things next season. There were still flashes of the brilliance that we knew from the first three seasons. They're too talented not to get things back on track. Let's hope the hectic and chaotic season finale is leading us in different directions for next season.

-- Remember a time when there were two different shade of brown M&Ms and no red or blue ones at all? Remember a time when black olives were the most exotic thing you could get on your pizza? Remember a time when there was only one flavor of Mountain Dew – and it was green? RETRO does.

I'd like to take the way back machine this week to past even 23 years ago which would make me a tiny tike of a person. Too tiny to know what to do on a Saturday night, but just tiny enough to want to stay awake past 11 PM. After a long night of battles between the good and the evil, I would settle down for a long night of TV around 11. A long night consisting of me nodding off around midnight. Sometimes that meant SNL. Sometimes that meant Saturday Night's Main Event. Before I was old enough for either one of those, that meant it was time for this guy – the scariest man alive:



Just look at those eyes. He is ready for murder. For those of you who do not know (which would be anyone outside of the Indianapolis metro area), this man was our local horror host; Sammy Terry. This man struck such a fear in me, that I would hide underneath covers on the couch, peering out a little hole I left open to see him. Like any other horror host, Sammy Terry just popped on and off our TV before and after commercial breaks during the airing of some public domain black and white horror flick like The Creature from the Black Lagoon or The Blob. I grew up afraid of giant gelatinous creatures because of Sammy Terry. It wasn't until my mid-twenties when I rediscovered the reason for my childhood night terrors on the internet that I realized his name sounded an awful lot like cemetery. Sue me.
Yeah, I saw the string on his pet spider, George. Yeah, the "special effects" and jokes were the very definition of the word ‘campy." I didn't care. Sammy Terry was going to eat me. I had come to terms with it.

I met the gruesome ghoul once at a neighborhood Halloween parade. I was pretty young.; maybe seven or so. He was at the end of the fundraising haunted house. There was no way in hell I was going into the haunted house – I mean they really sometimes killed people in there. I did go into the final room to get my trick-or-treat bag full of goodies from the ol' grim reaper himself. It turned out more like I went into the room, saw him and cowered in a corner until someone went over and got a bag for me. Ol' Sammy retired sometimes in the 80s, only putting out a couple of ‘haunted Indiana" specials that play around Halloween each year. Indianapolis hasn't had a horror host since. Seems kind of silly, but I think horror hosts are rarer these days than they were back then.

Here's a clip of Sammy Terry in action. Feel free to turn on the lights in your house if you need to. I should take this time to note that Ron Martin, A Fool's Utopia, nor 411mania.com is responsible for any psychological, physical or municipal damaged caused by viewing the following clip. Watch at your own risk!




YOUR ONE HIT WONDER FOR 1998:

This was a tough one, kids.

We have "The Mummers Dance" which was Loreena McKennitt's only mainstream hit though she is all the rave in world music. This song led me to owning two of her albums, so I couldn't pick her. Then there was "Bitter Sweet Symphony" by The Verve. However, for the longest time I thought this was by Coldplay, so I disqualified it for my own stupidity."Sex and Candy" by Marcy's Playground is pretty much the epitome of what a one hit wonder is… but it's pretty recognizable. Ditto "Closing Time" by Semisonic and "Hooch" by Everything. I am still angry about the worst use of a song in the history of film when "Flagpole Sitta" was used in a terrible sequence in the movie Disturbing Behavior

What I did was I played all these songs back to back and the one that got stuck in my head is the one I picked. Here you go.



I totally forgot this song ever existed. Now I can't get it out of me head. If you actually played the video above and didn't just skip over it, you have the same problem. When you walk down the street and whisper to yourself "Are You Jimmy Ray?" be prepared for the stairs. Such is my life. And let's not downplay chicks with hats from the Order of Water Buffalo on. Am I Right?


23 Years Ago Today…

July 17, 1985

#1 Song



"A View to Kill" by Duran Duran

#1 Album



Songs from the Big Chair by Tears for Fears

Notables: "Shout," "Everybody Wants to Rule the World," and "Mothers Talk"

#1 Movie



Back to the Future

Notable Openings: The Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome and Silverado


I must leave you now.

Do not be sad for I will return next week. Maybe be sad because I will return next week. Which ever is fine, as long as I am provoking some sort of emotion.